February 26, 2011

Dear Family,
Well this week was super busy again. We went to Otavalo and Ambato again this week. We went 2 days back to back so it was really tiring. On Monday we went to Ambato and we stayed the night there. In the morning we had Zone Conference with them and afterwards we traveled back to Quito. We got to Quito at about 8:30 PM. The next morning at 8 AM we left President´s house to Otavalo and had the zone conference at 10 AM. We stayed the night in Otavalo and then we came back the next morning. It was pretty crazy but I really enjoyed it :)
When we were in Ambato on Monday we went on divisions with the zone leaders. We had a really good experience. Most of the time we were just talking with people in the street and knocking on doors. We finally talked to someone in their store and she was pretty interested. She called her husband and we shared some time with them. They were both really young. He was 22 and she was 21 and they had a 4 year old daughter. Right off the bat they started sharing so many things that they´re going through and they asked for help. They have a lot of mistrust in their relationship and they want to get over it. We talked about family prayer and scripture study and they loved it. They said that they think that´s what they need in their lives right now. It was a really spiritual experience :)
Well, President hasn´t told me where I´m going, nor who my replacement is. He´s really busy this weekend because the Area President, Elder Nash, is here and President is accompanying him to a stake conference. Next week I´ll still have a lot of meetings. We´ll have ZL Council and Leaders training next week. I´m excited. It´ll be weird to have to listen and not give the training :) I´m excited for it though. I have a lot of ideas now for being a zone leader and how to help a zone. I´ve learned a lot during this time as assistant and I want to put it to practice now.
Well I love you all. Thank you for all that you do and for your support. I love each of you so much.





Love,
Élder Hakes

February 19, 2011

Dear Family,
This week has been pretty crazy :) We had 6 new missionaries come and everything went really well. It´s been amazing for me to see how many good missionaries have been coming to this mission. This group has a lot of future leaders in it. Most of them had already been leaders in the church at home. One was an Elders quorum president for a year before coming here to the mission. That surprised me a lot. I´m excited to see there progress!!!
On Wednesday we had the last zone conference here in Quito. We had a ton of people there. Because of the changes, we had to invite a lot of missionaries from their new zones because they hadn´t been to a zone conference yet. There were 50 missionaries at the conference. That´s 1/4 of the mission!!! It was a really good conference too.
On Thursday we got to go help another zone with baptismal interviews. They´re supposed to have 15 baptisms today!!! I had a really amazing experience in one of the interviews that really strengthened my testimony. During the interview, the only doubt or problem that she had was about President Monson being a prophet of God. When I first found out I kind of let it aside and kept going through the interview questions because I thought that there might be something else. When I finished all of the questions I asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She told me yes, but she wants to know if President Monson is a prophet first. I asked her how she could know that he´s a prophet. She answered by saying that she had to pray. I told her ok then lets kneel down and you can ask Heavenly Father if Pres. Monson is a prophet of God. We knelt down and she said the prayer. I was praying in my heart that she would recognize the spirit during her prayer. Towards the end of the prayer she began to stutter a little bit and she ended saying amen. She sat down and was looking down into her lap crying. The first thing she said was, "I can´t believe that He would answer me so fast. I feel exactly how I felt when I prayed about Joseph Smith." It was such a special experience for me. Heavenly Father answered both of our prayers. After she told me about what she felt she told me that she has to get baptized on Saturday. I am so grateful that I was able to have that experience. It strengthened my testimony of President Monson and of prayer. He will always help his children when they sincerely ask for it.
Well, this week I´ve been working hard on leaving everything ready and prepared for my replacement. He´ll have to learn everything in 4 weeks because my companion is ending his mission then. It´s kind of weird to think that I won´t be here in a week and a half. I´m excited to go back to the field again. It´ll be fun to get back to the real work :)
Well I love you all. Thank you for all that you do. I´m grateful for each of you.






Love,
Élder Hakes

February 12, 2011

Us in front of another catholic church



Us in front of some catholic church


Vomocil, Di Natale and I in front of the Panecillo


Presidential House


Me in front of a sweet Quito Billboard

Dear Family,
Well, this week has been really fun. We had 2 zone conferences and they both went amazingly. At the zone conferences we always eat lunch and we had 2 different people cook for us. They were both Cubans. The food that they cooked was amazing!!! During the zone conferences we also make s´mores for dessert (I might have already mentioned that, oh well) :) It has been really fun to be able to train these missionaries and to be able to help them.
We had a very interesting lesson this week. I got a hold of an old investigator and we went to visit her for the first time. She has had some crazy experiences in her life. Especially with the missionaries. 2 days before the missionaries knocked on her door, she had a dream that 2 young, handsome men came to share the truth with her. When they knocked on the door those missionaries were the 2 young, handsome men that she had dreamed about. She said that it scared her, but she pretended like she was just listening and invited them in. Apparently she was going to get baptized and she had an interview with someone in the mission presidency. She didn´t pass so she stopped going to church and she stopped listening. Now, she is going to get married to her long-distance boyfriend that lives in Washington D.C. (he visits every 6-8 months). She says that she is interested and that she´s going to start reading the Book of Mormon again. She actually has her own triple combination. It was a crazy but really good experience :)
Well this morning we cleaned out the apartment really, really good. We just threw away everything that we don´t use and that no one wanted. We scrubbed down everything. It took like 2-3 hours but we finished it and the apartment looks amazing now. The spirit was there a lot stronger after we cleaned. It was a good thing that we finally did a deep clean :)
Today we went to Historical Downtown Quito. According to President Sloan, Quito has the biggest historical downtown in all of South America. We took some sweet pictures. We saw the "White House" of Ecuador (the Presidential house with the big Ecuadorian flag on top). We also saw a few plazas and the Panecillo form below. It was really cool. We got some fun pictures and we got to see some cool sites.
Well, President Sloan told me that I´ll be going back into the field on March 1st. I´m really excited but sad at the same time. I´m excited to get back to the field and be with the missionaries more, but I´m sad that I won´t be with President as much and I won´t train as much. President told me that I´ll love the place where I´m going so I´m excited to find out where :)
I love you all so much. Thank you for the good examples that you have all been to me. I am so grateful to have known each of you. In my patriarchal blessing it says that I am blessed in my opportunities to meet good and honorable people. You are those people. I love you all so much.










Love,
Élder Hakes

February 5, 2011

Dear Family,
This was such a crazy week!!!! I´m so exahusted :) Zone Leader´s Council went really well. We played basketball instead of soccer and a lot of the latins got kind of mad. It was really fun to play though. They were just being stubborn ha ha ha :) On Wednesday we left for Esmeraldas. I can´t believe that we were back in the coast again. It seems like we were just there yesterday. Time is flying!!!! On Wednesday night we went on divisions with the zone leaders in Esmeraldas (there are 4 ZLs). We had a really good exchange. We were walking in the street and we contacted this guy. He was really interested and he invited us in to his house. It was way good :) We talked with him and his wife. Well, they aren´t married yet (that´s very common on the coast) but they want to. They said that they´re going to go to church so we were pretty excited!!!
So this time around we have Zone Conferences again. They´re every 3 months and I feel like we just barely had the last one. For zone conferences we always have lunch so we get to eat food from all over the country. The food on the coast is so good. It´s way better than anything in Quito :) For the training that we give during the zone conference we have to teach with the zone leaders. It makes things kind of complicated. We have to have time before to plan everything out with them. The first 2 conferences have gone really good so we really have enjoyed it. Our training´s theme is "Teach People, Not Lessons" for this month. We start off the training with a bad example. My companion is standing up in front of everyone and he just says lets go to page 169 and he just reads it. He doesn´t make hardly any comments. He´ll ask a question every now and then, but he won´t let anyone answer it. He answers it himself and just keeps going on reading. After reading most of the section he says, "Well, now we want to leave a commitment with you" and he looks at me. The whole time while he is reading I sit down and am playing with our cell phone. Sometimes I´ll answer a call or make a call while my companion is reading. When he looks at me I´m not paying attention at all so he nudges and then I just say, "Oh, well, will you speak with everyone?" After that we just tell them that it´s the Zone Leaders turn. We just show them what it feels like when we don´t focus in them. It´s a really fun bad example that we do :)
Today we went to a place called Teleferico. It´s basically a ski lift that takes you up on top of a mountain. It was pretty amazing. We were able to see all of Quito and we got some amazing pictures. The lift took us up to 4,100 meters or 13,451.4 feet. It was pretty hard to breath up there! Elder Falconi is still with us and he has a panoramic camera so we got some really sweet pictures :) It was a fun p-day. I really need some time to relax. It´s been a while since I´ve done that :)
Well I love you all. Thank you so much for all that you do for me. I love this great work. I feel as Alma the younger (Alma 36:24). This is a wonderful work that blesses so many people.








Love,
Élder Hakes

January 29, 2011

Dear Family,
This week was way too crazy!!!! We had a lot of trainings and 2 nights we had to take a missionary to the hospital past midnight. So about 2 weeks ago a missionary had to have his appendix removed and he has been staying with the secretaries and us until he is well enough to go back to work. So this week we had to go to the hospital 2 times, both for the same reason. On Tuesday I was with Elder Falconi (the one that had surgery) teaching a lesson. On the way back he told me that his stomach was hurting a little bit more and when we were right outside of the house he stopped because he had a blood/pus/infection stain on his shirt. We took him straight to the hospital and waited. They had to open the incision a little bit to get the infection out because there was a lot of it. The same thing happened on Thursday night. They had to clean him out again. On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning we got home at 2:30AM and on Thursday night/Friday morning we got home at 1:30AM. I´ve never been so tired. He´s doing fine now but he has to go to the hospital everyday to get the infection drained. What a crazy week!!!!!
Well on Wednesday, right after being in the hospital, we had another training with 2 other zones and the same thing yesterday, Friday, morning. This time around we´ve been teaching about the importance of following-up with our investigators. President Sloan, Elder Arellano, and I came up with a paper that we leave with the investigators so they can see their own progress and so they can be better prepared. We´ve been teaching that and we´ve had a fun little activity that we do with them. We give each of them a piece of paper and then we tell them to just watch us. We then teach them how to make a swan. During the whole time we tell them that we´ll be there to help them and that we´ll show them how to do it. After we finish showing them, we leave the room and say that we´ll be right back. After about 3-4 minutes we come back and we start teaching about another thing, that isn´t the oragami. Almost everyone has been really confused at that part. After teaching for another 5 minutes we ask them. How many of you were excited to make a swan? (almost everyone raises their hand). Then we ask, "How did you feel after we left you to do it on your own?". We have gotten a lot of different answers. The typicals are lost, needing help, wanting to finish, they did something that wasn´t a swan, etc. After that we relate their feelings that they had to the feelings of an investigator when we don´t follow-up with them. A lot of the time they feel the same way. It was a really fun round of trainings. We really enjoyed that activity :)
This next week is going to be pretty fun too :) We´re going to have ZL Council on Monday and Tuesday and we´ll travel to the coast Wednesday-Friday for Zone Conferences. This month is Zone Conference month so we have more stuff to do :) We get to plan out how to feed the missionaries at the conferences for lunch. I´m excited though :) So this month, January, we all had interviews with President Sloan. In my interview President told me that I should prepare myself to go back out into the field. He told me that he didn´t know when he would change me but he wants me to be prepared if he´s going to do it. That could mean that in 2 weeks I could be back in the field!!! I´m excited to see what happens :)
Well I love you all. Thank you for all that you do for me. Each and every one of you is special to me. Thank you!!!!!!!!



Love,
Élder Hakes

PS....You reminded me of something. On Wednesday during the training we saw 2 General Authorities, Rafael Pino and Marcus B. Nash, and David Beck, the Young Men´s general president. They all came for some training here in Quito. It was a nice surprise :)
Well, the Taco family didn´t get baptized yet. They didn´t go to church again so we´re waiting until next week. I´m not 100% sure about them anymore. They say they want to but they aren´t doing anything so their desires will turn into action. The hardest part is that the dad is going to be working out of town. For 3 years he will work 15 days out of town and then have 1 day to come back to his family. I´m not sure if we should baptize him unless he´s really converted. A lot of the times we baptize people when they have a testimony because we know that by receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost they will be able to obtain a personal conversion. In the Taco family´s case, they wouldn´t have the support that they need because the dad won´t ever be at home. I guess we´ll see what happens.


PPS.....I forgot to tell you about a cool experience that I had in the hospital. It was about 11:00 PM when he decided that he needed to go to the hospital. I said ok let´s go, but my companion suggested that we send the secretaries so we could sleep before the training that we were going to have the next day. I thought it was a good idea but I said no we´ll go anyways. I just felt like we had to go and not the secretaries. I said a quick prayer and I felt the same so my companion and I went with him. When we got there and he was with the doctor he wouldn´t let her help him. He knew what they were going to do because he had done it 2 days earlier. He sent the doctor out and told us that we were going home again. We were a little bit frustrated and we started talking to him. We told him that he had to do it and he kind of broke down. He said that he couldn´t take the pain anymore and he started questioning why he had to suffer so much and why he was getting worse. We offered to give him a blessing and we did. We left him in the room alone and told him to make his decision and to pray. After about 10 minutes the doctor went back in and did what she needed to do. I honestly believe that we had to be there because he could have gotten a lot worse if we wouldn´t have made him stay. The secretaries aren´t as direct as we are and they most likely would have let him go home. I felt the Spirit so strong during the whole time when we were talking to him and when we gave him the blessing. It was an awesome experience.